ABSTRACT
This book is a study of literacy and its meanings in the lives of mothers. Among its origins are two sets of conversations, over 20 years apart. The first took place in 1973 during two separate initial assessment interviews at the adult literacy scheme where I then worked.2 The interviews were with women who denned themselves as “no good at” reading and writing and were looking to remedy this. What they said seems to me to encapsulate a kind of selfdisqualification by women that bothered me then and has haunted me ever since. The first woman, Milly, in her fifties, worked as a home help. She said: “Reading and writing is something I do when everything else is done”. The second woman, Iris, who had been nervous when she arrived, was putting on her coat to leave when she said: “I don’t want to be greedy. I just want to read what’s on the walls”.
